Games in Design

Ok – I’m back again on this semi irregular blog page 🙂 This time I thought it might be interesting to write about the games I’m currently working on. My hope is to start building something of a design blog in the next few weeks/months. This post will likely be less design process related than some of the others, but I do hope to start mapping the design process itself in the coming weeks. For now, let’s take a quick look at the games themselves.

With Helionox currently in production, I decided it was time to switch gears back design. I’m currently working on two game designs of my own and I’m doing some playtesting / development work on a third game for some good friends of mine. It’s quite a bit considering this is more of a passion than a job (at least for now) but I love it so much. It really IS a passion…

Festivals

Festivals is a game designed by Steve Ellis (Trains 2, Dicey Goblins) and Tyler Tinsley (Dicey Goblins). Both of these guys are incredible designers / developers. They both played significant roles in the development of Helionox and I’m super excited to be working on a game with them on Festivals. Luke Green is creating the art and it’s looking fantastic so far. It’s a fast paced game (maybe 10 minutes?) where players draft a hand full of performers and try to out perform each other during a series of Festivals. I’ll have lots more to announce about this is in the coming weeks, but this project is moving forward quickly and I suspect I’ll be running a Kickstarter for this one towards the end of Quarter 1 in 2018.

Rock of Mages

The name of this game says it all! It’s about Mages – who rock. Yep – get your electric guitars and magical scepters ready for combat. This is a super quick token flicking dexterity game where you take on the role of dueling mages in an epic rock battle. Use guitar picks to cast spells and flick them at your opponent to score points. This one has been a lot of fun to design. Not sure when it will be finished but I’m hoping for sometime in 2018.

Skinwalkers

This game is a monster. Literally. It’s about monsters but it’s becoming a real monster to design. Smaller lighter games are fun and faster to build than more complex games but I truly love deep strategy. My goal with Skinwalkers is to design a complex strategy combat game that’s easy to learn and plays in under an hour. A tall order for any game with real depth. Hopefully this will be a 2019 release but it still has a ways to go! I’ll keep you posted as I’m actively working on this one a lot. It will likely be the main focus of my Design Process blog posts going forward 🙂

Helionox

I’ve done a ton of design work on future expansions for this one so I’m confident in how this will turn out. I’m planning to do another game or two before a new Helionox expansion, but we’ll see what 2018 brings. My guess is 2019 for the next Helionox update but there’s a lot of directions I could go with this right now.

What kind of games do you like?

I’d love to hear from all of you. What kind of games are your favorites right now? Are you noticing any trends in game design in general? What does the future of board gaming look like to you?